


i recall central park in fall

by lulla_lunekjaer



Category: The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: Alone, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No EAS, Friendship, Gen, IS IT SHORT ENOUGH, IS THAT SHORT ENOUGH FOR YOU NOW AO3, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson Being Idiots, Songfic, This is a lot of Tags, but most of it's adelaide being herself, but then it stops???? are you okay????? AU, especially musical theatre (ben you nerd) (in fact it is i who is the nerd here), gratuitous references to songs the author likes, gratuitous use of pronouns, here I am back at it again with loveable asshole adelaide, i guess?, i wrote this instead of doing homework instead of sleeping, in which the author talks overmuch in the tags, it told me my first tag was too long and deleted it NOT FAIR, like there are so many, reluctant songfic, selective mutism, she's a vodka aunt for sure, the neighbor sings loud duets with their partner in the shower and its annoying, these characters are minor and flat in canon so they're almost ocs at this point, this has no relevancy but Ben's Real Name Is Benvolio, yeah its very specific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulla_lunekjaer/pseuds/lulla_lunekjaer
Summary: "You hear your neighbor singing duets in the shower but all of a sudden they stop are you okay????" AUFeat. My Adopted Daughter Adelaide and Musical Theatre Nerd Ben and It's A Fantasy Metaphor Sherah





	i recall central park in fall

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to write at least a short fic or chapter each week this year. So far it's going okay, this is kinda late but whatever, it'll all average out hopefully.

The singing was getting really fucking annoying. 

Adelaide had lived in 341 Keifmeier Towers for three years, so really, she thought, she should have seniority over her neighbor, who, she presumed, had only lived there for two months. At least, they had only been singing for two months. 

Adelaide presumed the neighbor was a he, since they typically sang lower ranged songs and male recording artists, but long exposure to her business partner Lena had taught her never to assume. 

She had been in her kitchen the first time she heard it. At first, the faint whisperings of a song -  _ this is the correlation  _ _ something something _ _ and love - _ had seemed to be coming through her French press. Great, she thought, either I bought a novelty item or my coffee maker is haunted.

A haunted French press could’ve become an internet sensation. A neighbor that sang, in and out of the shower, at all hours of the night, was nothing but a nuisance. 

The worst was when her neighbor got up early. Adelaide  _ liked  _ Hamilton, she did, but it’s one thing to like a global musical theatre phenomenon and quite another to be woken up by your neighbor rapping Lafayette’s part -  _ and I’m never gonna stop until I make ‘em/drop and burn ‘em up and scatter their remains _ \- at the top of their lungs at 5:30 on a Saturday morning. 

Despite this, Adelaide never made a noise complaint, not even slipping a note under the door to ask her neighbor to tone it down some. She definitely could have. The complaints box was right there in the lobby. Sorry,  _ comments _ box.

Her first surprise was the duets. Another, more feminine sounding, voice had joined her neighbor in his daily assault on Adelaide’s eardrums -  _ my face, my neck, my bare arms  _ (the new voice) _ / and I look you in the eye  _ (her neighbor).

And so it went, on -  _ a heart full of love / a night bright as day -  _ and on -  _ you’ll be my king and I’ll be your castle / no you’ll be my queen and I’ll be your moat  _ \- and on -  _ but somehow I can see/just exactly how I’d be/if I loved you _ \- and on. 

Her second surprise was that she began to like it. Adelaide occasionally found herself humming a line that she had heard while searching for fair trade coffee at the grocery store, or walking home after brunch at Lena’s -  _ hold you close in the night in the dark be your light _ . It was . . . nice. Reassuring. Yup, that’s my weird neighbor, singing again.

Her third surprise was that they stopped. Although she didn’t know it, there was one last song. It was just her neighbor, not the other voice, which Adelaide had grown used to, and they sounded somehow so much less without it, so lonely -  _ in the rain the pavement shines like silver _ \-  even less then they had at the beginning, when it was just them. 

It took her three days without singing before she started to worry about them. They hadn’t moved, or died, because she could still hear the water of the shower in the mornings while she was making her coffee. On the fifth day, she stood outside 342 for a solid ten minutes debating whether or not to knock.

She had just lifted her perfectly manicured hand when the door opened.

“Hello?” Her neighbor was, all things considered, quite handsome. It really was a pity that handsome men were not Adelaide’s type. 

She took a deep breath.

“Hi. I’m Adelaide, I live next door.”

He grinned at her and yawned. It was, after all, 9am on a Sunday. 

“Ben Taylor. I live here. Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand to shake.

Adelaide shook it.

“So, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“It’s about the singing,” she said, watching his smile vanish from his face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone could hear it. We - I’ll stop.”

To her surprise, Adelaide found herself protesting. “No, no, it isn’t like that. I don’t mind, it’s just that you stopped, and I - I was worried about you.” She’d known him for less than two minutes and already she was worried. Who are you anymore, she thought. She was wrong. She had been getting to know him for months, but he was meeting her for the first time.

“Give me a second,” he said, retreating back into the apartment. She heard him speak quickly to someone else, but she couldn’t make out the words, or if anyone else answered. After just long enough to make Adelaide consider the pros and cons of fleeing back to her own apartment and pretending nothing had ever happen, Ben reappeared in the doorway. 

“I guess you’d better come in,” he said.

His apartment was neater than hers, which had been in a state of disrepair for months, ever since Daisy had moved out, really. It was bright, with white curtains that reflected the light onto the wind chimes hanging by the balcony. A large fish tank with a betta fish and a small smiling mermaid in it sat by the bookshelf. A little sign next to it read “Ariel and Amphitrite’s Palace.”

“Ariel’s the fish,” Ben said, “after  _ The Tempest _ , you know?” 

“Then Amphitrite’s the mermaid? After the Greek goddess?” Adelaide had written her senior thesis on Sappho. There had been quite a lot of research into various goddesses. 

Ben grinned again. “Yeah, Sherah’s idea.” He gestured towards the young woman who sat with her knees tucked up on the couch, joining her a moment later. Adelaide took the chair opposite them.

“So, ummm,” she said, unsure of how to begin.

Sherah poked Ben, then said something to him in sign language. He quickly signed back, then turned to Adelaide. 

“I’m going to be speaking to you for Sherah, she’s told me to tell you that she’s selectively mute, and although she’d fluent in ASL, she can hear you perfectly. She’s going to sign things to me and I’m going to translate them. From here on out, whenever I say “I,” I mean Sherah. Got it?” he asked, looking towards Adelaide, who nodded. “I’m going to be focused on her hands, so I won’t be making eye contact with you, either. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

“Hi,” Ben said as Sherah began to frantically move her hands into what Adelaide knew to be words, “I’m Sherah. This is - not a great day. Week. I can’t really talk right now. You asked about the singing. As you probably know, my fiance Ben’s a huge musical theatre geek,” Ben smiled as he said that part, “and I mentioned it to my speech therapist therapist a while back. Dr. Thumb thought that maybe it might help with being in public if I could pretend I was onstage. Yeah, it’s silly, but so are a lot of speech therapies, and sometimes they work, so,” Sherah smiled a little and raised one shoulder, as if to say,  _ what can you do _ . Adelaide gave the same smile back at her, noticing for the first time that Sherah’s hair was dyed, so dark blue that it was almost black, and that her earrings were shaped like seashells. They were pretty. 

“I’m also allergic to a lot of anxiety medications and I’ve had some pretty bad reactions in the past, so that’s pretty much a no. Turns out, when something supposed to help you almost kills you and you end up in the ER the night before your chemistry final exam, doctors are really reluctant to put you on something like it again.” Here, Sherah and Ben smirked simultaneously, and it was clear this joke had been trotted out before. 

“So we started singing together, low stress, no big deal if I drop out in the middle. And it actually helped. I would visualize people watching Ben sing, then both of us, then me. It felt nice. You can’t see specific people on stage, you know, with the lights it’s just all a blur. I used to do costumes in college and they would let me hang out backstage during the shows, in case anything went wrong. That’s how we met, actually.” Ben reached a hand out and gripped Sherah’s shoulder, and she paused in her signing for a moment to smile straight at him.

“And it was helping in public, too. I talked to the waitress when she got my order wrong when Rory and I went out to lunch the other day. I don’t even know why they thought I ordered oatmeal, it was lunch. Nevermind. Then last week, I ran into a kid from school.” Sherah’s face fell. “Well, not a kid. My age.”

Ben began to jiggle his leg. Adelaide could tell it was making both of them uneasy to talk about it.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she interrupted. “It’s a lot for you already, and i shouldn’t even be here to begin with. I can go.”

Sherah emphatically shook her head, then signed something to Ben.

“No, please stay, it feels good to, for lack of a better word, talk about it. You worried about us, that’s so kind of you. Besides, you’re really pretty.” Sherah winked at Adelaide, who felt the inexplicable urge to reach over and hold both of their hands.

“Okay, so last week I saw this guy I went to school with. Small town, everyone on the same classes, elementary school through graduation. I’ve been selectively mute since I was seven. This guy, Kenneth, he called me Chatty. People always say middle school is bad, but for me, third grade was the worst. Eventually people stopped asking for my real name. They just called me Chatty, which, for a kid who can’t talk, is actually really cruel. I’ve started to embrace it more, to feel the irony more, but I saw him, and I made eye contact, and he came over to me, and called me that and it was like nothing had changed.” 

Sherah shuddered, just a little, and Ben placed his hands over hers, stopping her signing. She looked up at him, and he moved his hands to cup her face. 

Adelaide felt like she should have left two backstories ago. 

Ben softly kissed her on the forehead. Sherah smiled softly, then looked at Adelaide and began signing again. Ben hurriedly began translating again.

“Sorry for using you as therapy. It’s not very kind of me. I should go to my actual therapist, but I . . . can’t leave right now. I’m kind of a mess.” Ben’s voice broke on that last word, and he gripped Sherah’s leg, as if to tether her to his love for her. “I can’t talk, I can’t leave the house. The only reason I can even sign to you right now is because Ben told me you were our audience the whole time.”

Adelaide supposes she was right. She had listened like the blacked-out audience Sherah had referred to, not quite watching, not quite there, but listening. Over time, even appreciating. After all, she hadn’t ever put something in the comments box, even though the walls were thin and her french press remained unhaunted. 

She slowly rose and stood behind Sherah, gripping her shoulder, the twin of Ben’s hand on her leg. She slowly looked up at Adelaide, earrings swinging ever so slightly. 

“Thank you,” Adelaide said, “for the music.”

What she really meant by this was, thank you for opening up to me, for letting me hear you, for being vulnerable with me. I find it hard enough to be vulnerable in front of other people and I can’t even imagine your life. 

What she meant was, you’re gorgeous and strong and your fiance is a dork but also really chill and an all around cool person.

What she meant was, I hope this becomes something. 

Adelaide heard the first strains of singing again eight days later. She was making coffee, which she hurriedly rejected in favor of pulling out her phone and going to a page she had bookmarked three weeks previously.

_ do I dream _

_ I’m awake _

Adelaide took a breathe.

_ a heart full of love _

This was it. She began,

“He was never mine to lose - “

**Author's Note:**

> Songs referenced, in order -  
> The Unwinding Cable Car by Anberlin  
> Guns and Ships from Hamilton  
> Natasha & Anatole from Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812  
> A Heart Full of Love from Les Miserables  
> I'll Cover You from Rent  
> If I Loved You from Carousel  
> Know Your Name by Mary Lambert  
> On My Own from Les Miserables  
> and then A Heart Full of Love again  
>    
> And, of course, the title is from Danke Schoen by Wayne Newton, as featured in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and which is apparently the only thing I think of when I think of singing in the shower.
> 
> I changed the person who gave her the nickname "Chatty" from Chase to Kenneth because, while he was joking, it was an unkind thing to call her and I prefer to portray Chase as a more sympathetic character. I really don't care about Kenneth and he's mean in canon so I chose him to portray the traumatic figure from Sherah's childhood. This also contains some of my feelings on the line "That's just what we called her. We don't even know her real name." from OWAW. 
> 
> I also want to make clear that I am in no way a medical or mental health professional - nor have I studied ASL, so consider Ben's translation slightly altered to make Adelaide understand if there's anything off - and while I have done research and tried to portray selective mutism and ASL in the best and most accurate and compassionate way I can, I am sure that I have gotten something wrong. I don't know if singing has ever been used as speech therapy for selective mutism, as I know it has for other speech issues, but I could imagine it very well for these characters. If you have any ways that I could improve my representation of them, please let me know.
> 
> Also no one in this is straight and neither Ben or Sherah is cis jsyk and in-universe Adelaide/Ben/Sherah is totally chill if you're up for that


End file.
